Rioting in the UK

"Not that I would cast nasturtians"

Not even on the graves of those you've just 'inherited' from?
I hadn't considered becoming unscrupulousness in my work as a career move.....but not you've got me thinking.

The really bad news is that the start of the Premier League might be delayed because of these idiots

Well today Parliament spoke and its voice was, in my opinion, terrifying, not for those who rioted, couldnt care less there, but for th erest of us. Proposed measures include;

"To look at whether it would be right to stop people communicating via social media when "we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality"

Plans to look at whether wider powers of curfew and dispersal orders were needed

New powers for police to order people to remove facemasks where criminality is suspected

Courts could be given tougher sentencing powers

Landlords could be given more power to evict criminals from social housing."

Also;

"More than 90,000 people have signed an online petition calling for anyone convicted of taking part in the riots to lose any benefits they receive"

"An estate agent and students studying accountancy, journalism and engineering faced the district judge on charges arising from the riots.
The fate of an 18-year-old man who bought sports clothes which had been stolen from JD Sports in Clapham illustrated how seriously these offenders were being treated.
Ordinarily punished by a fine or community service, he was remanded in custody to face the heavier prison sentences of the crown court.
"Given the seriousness of the circumstances" was the repeated refrain of the judge as she refused bail and sent each defendant to the crown court.
She said her power, to send people to jail for six months, was not enough."

Yeah lets just change the definition of the laws and justice on a whim to send a message, thats a good precedent to set.


Scottish Independance cannot come soon enough for me, sorry England but your just to dangerous to be a part of, and not because of some looters.
Heres my main gripes with the above.


1. "stop people communicating via social media when "we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality"- we already know how this one turns out we have seen it with the terror laws, we were told they were for our protection and would only be use din extreme and severe cases and within a year local councils were using it fr all sorts of stuff it was never 'allegedly' supposed to be for. And who defines what these terms are? Were the protests against Iraq on the strest of London 'disorder'? What about the G8 rallies? Slippery slope this one, very slippery and sadly feeds into the ongoing attempt by governemnt to control the internet and curtail freedoms thereon.

2. "wider powers of curfew and dispersal orders were needed"- again who decides? On what criteria? How would it be inforced? And of course it would effect everyone nnocent and guilty alike. Is that just?

3. "New powers for police to order people to remove facemasks where criminality is suspected"- again how long until its being used to target Muslim women? About a week I reckon.

4. "Courts could be given tougher sentencing powers"- to what end? Our prisons are full beyond bursting with overcrowding. Theres no money to build more and the even the Tory minister in charge doen't think prisons are effective in the majority of cases outside of those who clearly represent a danger to others and has been tryingto introduce reforms to reduce prison populatin sin favour of Community Sentences and the like.

5. "Landlords could be given more power to evict criminals from social housing."- yes because taking those with next to nothing and kicking them onto the streets is obviously going to make them upright citizens. This is madness.

just read through the stuff and agree it makes scary reading, knee jerk reactionary responses and opportunistic use of events for political agendas!

petition is over 100,000 so by the new rules it has to go forward for consideration now!

(Now wheres that link for teaching in scotland?... -with science class size limits it has appealed before! )

Kafria wrote:petition is over 100,000 so by the new rules it has to go forward for consideration now!

The petition rules scare me, to be honest. That sort of populism just strikes me as dangerous; what's to stop 100,000 people from raising all sorts of ideas that violate individual rights and liberties. I know they don't automatically become law or anything but it still is a bit perturbing to me.

Um, I think we Scots are to blame for the petitioning. We've had it since our Parliament got set up and the English decided it was a good idea and nicked it. Difference is Scots use theres for sensible things like free buckie.

I thought I should address the petition thing with some due seriousness after all (i must be getting sober again ).
Heres a few examples of some of the Scottish Parliament debates resulting from the petition system here;

"A debate on knife crime is to be hosted by the Scottish Parliament’s Public Petitions Committee in mid-January 2009 in direct response to a petition.
This has been inspired by John Muir, who brought a petition to the committee after his son Damian was stabbed to death in 2007. The committee hopes to expand the debate on knife crime and create a forum for a cross-section of views from people and groups across Scotland. "

"Clarity on the funding of non-NHS cancer treatment drugs has been called for by the Public Petitions Committee today. The report into the availability on the NHS of cancer treatment drugs follows the committee’s inquiry inspired by the petition brought to it by Tina McGeever and her late husband Michael Gray.
The committee has raised serious concerns about procedures within NHS boards to assess whether a cancer patient can be ‘exceptionally prescribed’ a non-NHS drug. A lack of clarity and transparency, with information not being made available to patients at the crucial time of diagnosis, was also revealed in evidence sessions. The procedure was perceived as not working in the best interests of the patient.
The committee recommends that data should be gathered across all NHS boards on how such ‘exceptional prescribing’ processes work and how guidance issued by the drug appraisal bodies is being implemented. A further recommendation has been made to carry out research into the methodologies used to measure and evaluate the health benefits of a particular drug, known as the quality-adjusted life year (QALY) process."

And more briefly a couple of other prominent ones;

-production of new guidelines on vitamin D supplementation for children and pregnant women.

-guidlines on male victims of domestic abuse/violence.

As you can see in the years since its introduction we Scots have never felt the need to use it in the manner the English seem so keen on.

That is rather encouraging, Petty, I have to admit. I'm sure that good can come of such a measure; perhaps I am too cynical from being around the American public, which seems to be largely apathetic about politics, allowing groups like the Tea Partiers to gain national prominence in political discourse. I shudder to think what odious bills they might introduce if a similar system was in place in the US. It's good to know that in some places, however, people are past that.

Heard more on the radio this morning. Amazing how many people are criticizing the Government for such little action.

The Government has two ways of dealing with the problem at hand, it seems to me.

(1) sit back and wait to it blows over and charge a few people later on, or,

(2) up the ante and move troops in.

The truth is, nothing the Government does or doesn't do will be applauded.

I just watched the QT Riot Special (Question Time-BBC flagship politics show. Panel of politicians and studio audience asking questions). It was certainly lively. And as it was coming from London it was often heated. As were the politiians (particularly John Prescott who eventually exploded-figuritively). I also watched it with the texts on (sent in by the watching public) and whilst the BBC have an obligation to be balanced there is not much they can do if there is an ooverwhelming slant in the texts they receive towards one point of view. Tonights I thought was very much that. England is not feeling sympathetic. There is little appettite it seems to look at broader issues- and although some did bring up the double standards of politicians getting away with fraud in the expenses scam and people looting a shop being sentenced to prison and some tried valiantly to flag up the broader questions these riots raise, the mood seemed very much to the right for the most part. At times it felt worrying close to the far right, whose odious groups the BNP and EDL I fear will be the main beneficeries of such a mood in England. I fervently hope this mood does not permeate north of the border. I was given some hope on this by the almost complete lack of texts from anyone in Scotland, save one from a lady in Aberdeen who felt a part of the problem lay with parents working, kids in day care and noone home with a child and suggested paying mothers to stay at home. Whatever my feelings on such a proposal it is hard to imagine in the current England such an option or thought even being voiced.

Pettytyrant101 wrote:I just watched the QT Riot Special (Question Time-BBC flagship politics show. Panel of politicians and studio audience asking questions). It was certainly lively. And as it was coming from London it was often heated. As were the politiians (particularly John Prescott who eventually exploded-figuritively). I also watched it with the texts on (sent in by the watching public) and whilst the BBC have an obligation to be balanced there is not much they can do if there is an ooverwhelming slant in the texts they receive towards one point of view. Tonights I thought was very much that. England is not feeling sympathetic. There is little appettite it seems to look at broader issues- and although some did bring up the double standards of politicians getting away with fraud in the expenses scam and people looting a shop being sentenced to prison and some tried valiantly to flag up the broader questions these riots raise, the mood seemed very much to the right for the most part. At times it felt worrying close to the far right, whose odious groups the BNP and EDL I fear will be the main beneficeries of such a mood in England. I fervently hope this mood does not permeate north of the border. I was given some hope on this by the almost complete lack of texts from anyone in Scotland, save one from a lady in Aberdeen who felt a part of the problem lay with parents working, kids in day care and noone home with a child and suggested paying mothers to stay at home. Whatever my feelings on such a proposal it is hard to imagine in the current England such an option or thought even being voiced.

I think the problem is, schools don't interest kids. Get them interested in "something" and that can be the start of broader teaching. What I've said on the EDUCATION Thread is particularly wise, I think.

"The truth is, nothing the Government does or doesn't do will be applauded."- Orwell

That is true in almost every circumstance. Same goes for the police. If they had went in hard the first night as people say they should have they would have been accused of heavy handidness or even brutality. They cannot win either.
But for me this is largely all fluff as this is always true, these riots shed nothing new on that matter. The real issue is the corruption coming through our society, not from the bottom but from the top.
The pillars of society, church, government, police, the press, the banks lie in tatters in the UK. The Church (the Catholic one at any rate) has the pedophilia scandals and even if it didnt like all the Christianity in the Uk they would be slowly dying off. The government is a mess, our MP's were caught taking thousands in dodgy expenses in a manner which was endemic throughout the political class on all sides for years and years. The police have been caught up in so many scandals of late I have lost count. The press has been been in cohoots with the police giving bungs in brown envelopes in return for private information on citizens and acting with unbelievably low morals (hacking the murdered girls phone for info being a particular low point), and I don't even have to talk about the banks we all know what has happened there- theft and greed on a scale so large it probably requires a new name. And our youths role models are gyrating scantily clad women for the girls (Rhianna, Britney etc, telling them they deserve everything and demonstrating at the same time you get everything by selling yourself physically by grinding about mimicking sex acts on a stage dressed as aschool girl- or people like Jordan whose entire career and fame is based on exposing her comically large surgical breasts in public, fallin gout of clubs blind druunk and marrying some nw D-lister every other year) and the boys get over payed footballers constently caught up in drug/sex scandals and the only men in power or authority in our society are all a part of the corrupt group above and then there is the insta-fame reality show D-listers to look up to.
Who then are our youth getting their examples, their moral codes from in our society? What message does all this send? Nothing good I feel. And ignoring this is a dangerous, dangerous game.

Pettytyrant101 wrote:"The truth is, nothing the Government does or doesn't do will be applauded."- Orwell

That is true in almost every circumstance. Same goes for the police. If they had went in hard the first night as people say they should have they would have been accused of heavy handidness or even brutality. They cannot win either.
But for me this is largely all fluff as this is always true, these riots shed nothing new on that matter. The real issue is the corruption coming through our society, not from the bottom but from the top.
The pillars of society, church, government, police, the press, the banks lie in tatters in the UK. The Church (the Catholic one at any rate) has the pedophilia scandals and even if it didnt like all the Christianity in the Uk they would be slowly dying off. The government is a mess, our MP's were caught taking thousands in dodgy expenses in a manner which was endemic throughout the political class on all sides for years and years. The police have been caught up in so many scandals of late I have lost count. The press has been been in cohoots with the police giving bungs in brown envelopes in return for private information on citizens and acting with unbelievably low morals (hacking the murdered girls phone for info being a particular low point), and I don't even have to talk about the banks we all know what has happened there- theft and greed on a scale so large it probably requires a new name. And our youths role models are gyrating scantily clad women for the girls (Rhianna, Britney etc, telling them they deserve everything and demonstrating at the same time you get everything by selling yourself physically by grinding about mimicking sex acts on a stage dressed as aschool girl- or people like Jordan whose entire career and fame is based on exposing her comically large surgical breasts in public, fallin gout of clubs blind druunk and marrying some nw D-lister every other year) and the boys get over payed footballers constently caught up in drug/sex scandals and the only men in power or authority in our society are all a part of the corrupt group above and then there is the insta-fame reality show D-listers to look up to.
Who then are our youth getting their examples, their moral codes from in our society? What message does all this send? Nothing good I feel. And ignoring this is a dangerous, dangerous game.

So you're saying, "Life goes on as it has always done." And, of course, "Nothing ever changes, nor will." Is that it?

No I am saying Cameron standing up pointing the finger at those who took part and declaring that part of society is "sick" is not only not helpful it is a severe case of throwing stones in glass houses. A failure to recognise that the very parts of society which are supposed to represent a standard, an asperation are instead representing the opposite. The message is that those at the top are abusing you. They are stealing off you and evading the law, which seems not to touch them. If an MP is caught breaking Commons rules (such as fiddling expenses) the punishment is to be banned form the house for a period of time. (two or three of the more outrages claimants did go to court, and at least 1 to prison, for a few weeks- but they were sacrificial lambs and everyone knows it, the investiations into the expenses scandal showed it was common practice throughout parliament on all sides). If I fiddled my expneses to such a degree (or any) at my work I would be before a judge and I certainly wouldn't still have a job. Theres the problem. You cannot preach one thing whilst blatantly doing another. If it is not addressed the fabric underpinning society begins to tear, as it has in England. A failure to address this will only make those tears widen.

Some more detail from the BBC news site on Camerons evil plans to curb freedoms and the internet in one fell swoop;

"The government is exploring whether to turn off social networks or stop people texting during times of social unrest.
The prime minister told MPs the government was exploring the turn-off in a statement made to the House of Commons during an emergency recall of Parliament.
Mr Cameron said anyone watching the riots would be "struck by how they were organised via social media".
He said the government, using input from the police, intelligence services and industry, was looking at whether there should, or could, be limits on social media if it was being used to spread disorder.
Under social media, Mr Cameron includes Facebook, Twitter and specific technologies such as text messaging. The semi-private BBM messaging system on the Blackberry is said to have been widely used during the riots.
Home Secretary Theresa May is believed to be meeting representatives from Facebook, Twitter and RIM (maker of the Blackberry) to talk about their obligations during times of unrest."

Seems doomed to failure to me unless they switch off the internet- I mean, not that I'm suggesting it, but I could organise a riot here using the pm service or any other similar site to pass on information and spread it out.

I have to question what role social networking has really played. I remember everyone talking about how the Arab Spring was a series of "Twitter revolutions" that turned out to not actually be about Twitter (surprise, surprise). Granted, the UK is a very different case than the Middle East and I'm sure a much higher portion of the population in the UK actually uses social networking and text messaging, but I still wonder if it's just the media focusing on technology-related buzzwords. After all, it's not like riots are a new thing, so shutting down social networking services strikes me not just as repressive but also as totally missing the point. Even if you assume that these riots are being organized by coordinated communication (which I think is questionable), social networks are hardly the only way for that to happen.

It misses the point by so much the only conclusion left to draw (assuming for a moment they are all just not blithering idiots) is that they are using the unrest as an excuse to put into law the power for the government to curb the movement of information on the internet. This must be strongly opposed.

I wouldn't necessarily say they're blithering idiots, rather that the government is just desperate to look like they are doing something without actually deploying the army in the streets of London. They can't just sit around and do nothing, that would be political suicide, but having troops marching through public streets looks really bad and not at all what a first world nation is supposed to be like. Neither option is good, so I think the government is grasping at straws for something they can do. Because the social networking angle has been hyped up by the media, it's an easy target to look decisive by striking without needing to involve the military.

I can't prove this hypothesis, and I'm sure there are some politicians who are happy for this excuse, but I'm not going to jump to the conclusion that it's a sinister conspiracy when it's just as likely the confused decision of a group of nervous people who probably don't entirely understand modern technology anyway (if British politicians are anything like their American counterparts, at least ).

I would normally be inclined to agree Eldo if this was in isolation, but it is not and has to be seen in the context of a sneaky but steady tide of legislation dealing with restraining the internet and the movement of information.

Most of the Internet censorship issues I'm familiar with have to do with clamping down on filesharing and copyright infringement rather than the sharing of ideas and raw information. I'm not terribly familiar with the history of this in Britain specifically, though, so I could be mistaken. Are there any brief accounts of recent legislation on this matter for the short-of-time/lazy?

The most recent troublng one- before this- was a court case against a service provider. It was on the surface about file sharing- what it actaully gave the governemtn in terms of power was the ability on various grounds to demand the service provider block any internet pages the government say they have to, not limited to just file sharing. Thats what I mean by sneaky legislation. There have been others along the way to that one and on the surface the argument being persued always seem vaguely reasonable but the resulting legislation gives a worrying amount of powers to the government.

The UK has a poor history on censorship- partly because we have no constitution so no legaly written down laws that protect rights. And the stance taken over the years has lets say not been always based on rationale. For example, and this is perhaps a crude example but it does illustrate the odd thinking here at times, up until the internet simply made it impossible the UK had an obscenity law, under this law a female could be shown in adult publications naked and in any state of arousal- but it was illegal to show an erect penis in case the poor weak flower filled female mind was twisted by the sight. No even given most MP's are privately educated at boarding schools even they must be aware most women have seen one or two in there time and are unlikely to collapse in a faint at a photograph of one. Nevertheless it remained illegal.
This ort of weird, almost Victorian thinking can at times surface, and our media can get very hysterical over such things. I could easily envisage a time with the governemnt banning all sorts of sites, from the political to the pornographic under the powers they are slowly but surely gathering in to themselves. For example a site claiming Zionists rule the world and should be opposed- is that anti-Jewish? Could it be banned under religous prejudice and incitment? I reckon with these powers it could be if they wanted it- and thats what worries me.

Pettytyrant101 wrote:A failure to address this will only make those tears widen.

How wide do the tears have to be before I have to take up a gun?

Eldorion wrote:Because the social networking angle has been hyped up by the media, it's an easy target to look decisive by striking without needing to involve the military.

Aren't "social networkers" just people like you and I, Eldo - you know, sitting dutifully at our computers solving the world's problems, but only in a theoretical sense?

"How wide do the tears have to be before I have to take up a gun?"- Orwell

Well thats the question isnt it- one already raised. This hasn't just been looting- people have died in particular a man who was protecting his shop and was callously murdered, they drove a car straight into him.
This should not have happened, and not just because its wrong and a terrible thing to do (although that should be reason enough) but because in a wealthy first world country like this shop owners should not have to take to the streets to protect their property from the mob. In a supposed civilisation that is the job of the police. If that goes so to does the rule of law and games up- we will all be needing a gun.

Pettytyrant101 wrote:"How wide do the tears have to be before I have to take up a gun?"- Orwell

Well thats the question isnt it- one already raised. This hasn't just been looting- people have died in particular a man who was protecting his shop and was callously murdered, they drove a car straight into him.
This should not have happened, and not just because its wrong and a terrible thing to do (although that should be reason enough) but because in a wealthy first world country like this shop owners should not have to take to the streets to protect their property from the mob. In a supposed civilisation that is the job of the police. If that goes so to does the rule of law and games up- we will all be needing a gun.

Ahh! "River" wide then!